Bloodlines and Letters
by Thenerdygeekyponders
Summary: A Study of Henry Winchester. One day he meets the Doctor, and Everything changes: Henry Winchester is a promising young student when he meets the Doctor for the first time. He's in college, with slicked back hair and wearing sweaters that don't exactly fit, awkward and gangly as hell. He's shy and uncertain, but so, so smart.


Edit: Disclaimer!

**No, I do NOT own anything from Doctor Who or Supernatural. This is just for fun, not profit, and it's hilarious if you think I ****_do_**** own it. So, onwards! **

Henry Winchester is a promising young student when he meets the Doctor for the first time. He's in college, with slicked back hair and wearing sweaters that don't exactly fit, awkward and gangly as hell. He's shy and uncertain, but so, _so_ smart. He aces his classes like it's clockwork, spending long nights over essays and longer weekends and vacations reverently devoted to memorizing spells and sigils and runes and incantations, striving to always make his father proud (Because what else can he do? It's his purpose to make his father proud when all his brothers have run away).

Freshmen year consists of him memorizing Enochian, dreaming of day when the Men of Letters will know and be awed by his prowess with spells. He learns to adapt to college, relishing the first mental challenge in what feels like years, as he spends weeks supernatural proofing his room (_Always be prepared_—his mother's mantra. _Knowledge is power_—the family motto).

Sophomore year he starts to add to the alphabet, making it his own, creating compound symbols for things like _angel, demon, summon, banish, protection, location_, all the while noticing the petite brunette who eyes him shyly from across the lecture hall (she has the greenest eyes he's ever seen).

Junior year he meets the Doctor, still wearing the blasted sweaters and still as shy as all get out (he can't work up the courage to speak to the green eyed girl).

He meets the Doctor in the library, as Henry pours over a textbook of ancient myths, a strange man runs around the corner yelling _RUN._

The Doctor Henry meets that day is skinny with a strange, pinstriped suit and hair that sticks up oddly.

That day Henry helps the strange man stop a highly intelligent shade of blue from terrorizing the University's Library, learning that the Doctor isn't really human, and not really a fan of Magic.

The summer is spent clawing through photography archives for a glimpse of the strange British man and his blue box (Henry is starting to love that shade of blue).

Senior year is spent taking classes on Space Travel and Astronomy, while trying to write a dissertation on Enochian and Hebrew (Weekends are split between pleasing his father and trying to find out information about the Doctor. He doesn't find any).

His father makes him get his first 'adult' suit that year, and Henry passes the first tier on initiations into the Men of Letters (he finally gets some information on the Doctor. It's so little, though. _So frustratingly little_—)

The summer after graduating is spent running across the country, searching in vain for the Doctor, as he vanquishes ghosts, shifters, and ghouls, pointedly ignoring the voice in his head that sounds awfully like his father telling him _No, this is foolish, come home, son. _

He finally finds the Doctor in Alabama, fighting off a Wendigo, acting like it's an alien.

After the encounter, the Doctor gives Henry his first, and only, tie pin. Gold and small with circles inscribed on it, the Doctor tells Henry it's: _Just a little protection, yeah? A friend gave it to me, and now I'd like to give it to you. I don't believe in Magic—Magic's a bit rubbish—but something tells me you may need it. _

When he gets home there's Hell to pay, but it's all quickly forgotten as he goes up 3 Levels in one weekend (the weekend after that he meets a quiet redhead with eyes like honey). He never forgets that summer spent traveling the country with the The Doctor.

His first year being initiated he spends his nights pouring over the same half a dozen sources on a strange man in a blue box that isn't human, and isn't any species the Men of Letters have ever encountered. Half way through the year he switches to six different sources, painstakingly translating them into English (He also finds out that Latin is the Dickens and that he is not so hot at it).

He discovers by the end of the year that the Doctor _is_ an alien with an ever changing face and the ability to be in any time period to save the day (Henry starts to read science fiction novels in his spare time, especially ones about Time Travel. H.G. Wells is his favorite).

Soon he grows apart from his father, struggling to juggle his Men of Letters responsibilities with finding the Doctor. His mother worries for him, her beautiful face creasing more and more with each passing month. His mentors don't understand (How can they? They never met the Doctor, never got that taste of the stars and free, _free_ adventure). They merely assign more translations to him, closeting him off in The Bunker.

When summer rolls around he desperately wishes for the taste of sun and sweet, clean air when all he inhales is dust and grime and the old, rotting taint of blood (when all he learns is how to exorcise a demon, how to kill an angel).

He leaves abruptly, running off into the summer again, once more searching, feverishly searching, for the man—_the alien_—and his blue box.

His parents are furious when he ambles home in his beat up '44 Ford pickup, and for once he doesn't object when they take away his keys and tell him to stop dreaming and obsessing like a madman (He stops searching after that summer, the disappointment and loss too fresh and bitter and new in his mouth everytime the warm weather rolls around from then on).

He grows, matures, and suddenly the sweaters fit a bit better, suddenly he feels less shy sometimes, suddenly he's able to ask out a brunette with icy blue eyes (she's wonderful; sharp and beautiful and tough as nails).

Suddenly he finds himself with a wife and son.

Suddenly he finds himself almost done becoming a Man of Letters.

And suddenly he finds himself disgusted by Angels and Demons, apprehensive of the prophets around him, saying The End is coming (The only one he believes is a grandmother in Fort Worth, Texas. A wonderful woman by the name of Dorothy who tells him that the Mayans are right).

He spends his last summer as a novice traveling the country for one more old college try (he's never really understood the phrase until now) to find the Doctor.

He finds the Doctor in Colorado (okay, the Doctor actually finds _him_) , and the two of them take out a murder (like the crows, used at Henry's suggestion) of Bean-Sidhe—Banshees.

The Doctor wears a bright blue suit this time, and he's sadder then Henry has ever seen him (even if this is only time they've met in years). He's also far more wrathful, the simmering rage now just barely satiated and held below the Doctor's skin. He's terrifying and for the first time Henry gets a real taste of how _old_ the Doctor is…

He leaves, and Henry gets the most horrible sense of foreboding, like it's the last time they may see each other (He doesn't want to believe it, _can't_ believe it because where would the mystery and the adventure go? Where would he go, with no breadcrumbs to follow, ones throughout history that seem tailored for him especially. What would he do without the diversion among the trials and the damnation and the salvation that probably don't really exist?).

When Henry finally gets the notice that he'll be officially a Man of Letters, he goes out and buys a bright blue suit, the color of his wife's eyes (and the color of the Doctor's suit, the color of that strange box of his). He wears the tie pin too, his gut telling him that he has to, _has to—something wicked, this way comes. _

The night rains, and Henry debates on whether to tell John about the strange man and his box as he walks to the headquarters (but history has other plans…).

He wonders, until he's inside and he feels _so close_ to being part of something, part of something _good_ and _great_ and _just _until he finds Abbadon wearing the skin of his friend—

And then he's running, heart pounding, mind scrambling as a thought, a beautiful, shining thought that he's been ignoring all these months comes to light (_timetimetimetimetimetimeTime Lord? TIMETRAVEL!_)—

…And then _he's crashing through time_ (blood calling blood, blood _always_ calls blood) falling, tumbling, rolling, until he appears, ruffled and dazed in a hotel room.

_And the rest_, as they say, _is History_.

(If only they knew, if only he had known before now.)

_"People assume that Time is a strict progression of Cause to Effect, but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of Wibbly-Wobbly, Timey-Wimey… stuff."_


End file.
